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RocketCyber emerges from stealth at ConnectWise Connect with platform of free and paid security apps for MSPs

RocketCyber’s founders have a track record of two successful startups behind them, and are looking to provide MSPs who don’t offer a full portfolio of services with a set of such offerings. The platform is scheduled for availability in early December.

Billy Austin, RocketCyber’s President

ORLANDO – A major message from ConnectWise at their IT Nation Connect event here was the need for MSPs to protect their clients, and themselves, by offering a broader portfolio of security services. RocketCyber, a Dallas-based startup, came out of stealth at the show with a platform designed to address that requirement. The RocketCyber Security Platform will provide an array of services, some provided to MSPs for free, and others offered on a fee basis, with all being designed to provide a high grade of security for SMBs and give MSPs more billable services. The platform is scheduled for availability on December 3.

“A lot of the MSPs here at the event do the basic essentials, like provide anti-virus and provide a firewall and that’s about it,” said Billy Austin, RocketCyber’s President and Co-Founder. “Given our background, we decided to solve a security use case at the SMB level and create a billable service opportunity by providing a CyberSecurity platform with a good volume of RocketApps.”

That background of the two principals behind RocketCyber adds to the interest around their platform. Austin and Carl Banzhof, RocketCyber’s CEO, have launched two successful startups before. Their first one, Citadel Security, which made security compliance software, was acquired by McAfee in 2006. Their second, iScan Online, made an automated risk intelligence solution and was acquired in early 2016 by LOGICnow, which in turn was acquired by SolarWinds later that year.

“With those companies, we built for the enterprise, and then built for the midmarket, and this time we are focused on the SMB,” Austin said. “We defined that market as 500 employees and below, with between 25 and 200 being the real sweet spot for this.”

At this point, the platform has 14 different RocketApps, with a further 23 on the road map in various stages of development. All are designed to detect a different malicious or suspicious activity.

“We have designed them all in-house, but we have been developing these kind of apps for over 40 years between us,” Austin said.

“We also built the platform in a way that we knew we would enable us to add apps very quickly,” Banzhof added.

“We wanted to get as many MSPs on the platform as we could – the more the merrier,” Banzhof said. “That’s why we used the free apps model. But we knew we had to give some things that are really valuable for free, for them to get their feet wet. This includes Advanced Breach Detection, Threat Hunting so the MSP can do assessments, and On Demand Analysis that lets them assess a suspicious file.”

Austin said that different regions and verticals have more interest in specific apps.

“We have probably spoken with 20 MSPs from Canada here, and with them, crypto-mining is a hot issue,” he indicated. “We have a RocketApp that detects if any type of cryptocurrency mining is being performed. This is a backdoor for trojans and malware, and massively increases the electric bill and consumes bandwidth. I ran a test and it ate the battery down to 8 per cent in 13 minutes.”

MSPs simply turn on the RocketApps that they want, and will access them through the RMM site. Out of the gate, RocketCyber is integrated with ConnectWise and Autotask, and their PSA alerts will go out to MSPs free of charge.

“We do not want to disrupt MSPs’ normal daily operations, so they will continue to use the management tools they are accustomed to using,” Banzhof said. “We aren’t coming in as a single pane of glass.” Longer term, the plan is to leverage more RMMs. All will be able to deploy RocketCyber in a matter of seconds.

“For 2019, we have a very aggressive marketing plan of hitting every MSP-related event – 23 of them in all,” Austin stated. “We will also start an annual training event that has both a technical track and a sales and marketing track in June of next year.”